The angel of unplanned pregnancies
by Inkpot satsuma
Summary: Silly little oneshot. Wherein Gabriel is inexplicably instantly loved by all infants and pregnant women he comes into contact with, and Sam is itching to ask why. Served with a side of Sabriel and some Destiel in the background, set around s6, except Gabriel lives.


**Something I wrote trying to break through my writer's block. Just some fun, a fanfic equivalent of doodling around. I like how it starts out and not so thriller about the end.**

**Anyway, hope you enjoy, this is something I've been thinking about lately. I think it'd be nice if infants loved Gabriel :)**

**Gosh, how I miss him!**

**BTW, I promise to update _Kiss it better_ soon! The chapter is almost finished.**

**Enjoy and review :)**

* * *

Gabriel is weirdly good with kids. Infants, that is, and toddlers. And pregnant women, too.

It's something Sam notices on the sidelines, out the corner of his eye, memorises absentmindedly and in the back of his mind, only to have it pop up whenever _that_ happens again. When they're on a case, he's paired up with Gabriel (usually the routine, since Dean refuses to work with the archangel, but also because he wants to grope Cas without witnesses, Sam won't be fooled no matter what Dean says), and they come across a baby or a pregnant woman. Which happens quite a lot in cases like hauntings in stereotypically idyllic suburban houses.

Whenever _it_ happens, Sam's a bit surprised, because Gabriel, with his crass sense of humour, explosive personality and deeply ingrained streak of cruelty displayed by his Trickster persona, is not someone he'd expect to have the baby equivalent of a gardener's green fingers. And yet, so it is. Babies seem to sort of _like him_, and Sam wonders if it's the same thing as with Cas – crying infants immediately settle down and become soothed when Cas is in the room, and it's probably his angelic presence that works like an invisible pacifier. But somehow, Sam thinks it's not just that when it comes to Gabriel. It's something more, in addition to the angel influence.

_It_ is happening again, now. They have themselves a slightly complicated ghost case in Tennessee (three deaths in three different locations in one town, they can't pinpoint a common denominator and therefore even start looking for the grave), and while Cas and Dean impersonate the FBI, Sam and Gabriel take on the role of journalists interested in 'local ghost stories and crap', as Dean put it.

They're interviewing a young mother who's very eagerly chatty about this, and perhaps just a little bit too morbidly excited about the whole thing. Still, better that than too scared to be useful, Sam thinks as he scribbles down whatever she's saying in his notebook. Beside him, on the sofa, Gabriel is giving much more attention to the cookies she'd offered them, than to what she's saying.

"I mean, people are saying it's the ghost of this woman who killed herself once when her husband left her, she hanged herself in the forest, but I think it's just a story," she tells them.

Unfortunately, it _is_ just a story – this was the first lead they've run into, and they checked it only to find that it definitely wasn't their ghost, that there even _wasn't_ a ghost in their story.

Sam's about to ask some more, when the baby monitor the woman has on the coffee table starts squealing and crying.

"Oh dang, sorry for a moment!" she grabs the device and dashes off to another room. Gabriel's honey-gold eyes follow her until she disappears.

"So what do you think?" Sam asks quietly, taking the opportunity while the young woman is gone. "I'm starting to wonder if it's a ghost."

"Nah, smells like a ghost."

Sam decides to pass up the question whether Gabriel meant that figuratively, or do angels actually _smell_ ghosts. Gabriel chuckles and pops another cookie in.

"Something like that, Sammich. And they _stink_."

Sam rolls his eyes and growls. Unlike Castiel, Gabriel has no respect for private thoughts whatsoever, and blatantly makes conversation with what goes on in another person's mind.

"Stop it," Sam hisses when the archangel reaches for yet another cookie. "It's not polite to eat everything."

"Hellooo, how long have you known me, Sammy?" the cookie vanishes in Gabriel's mouth.

"Don't call me that," Sam corrects automatically, a conditional reflex honed over years and years and _years_ of fighting Dean on this ever since he turned ten.

Gabriel snickers, doubtlessly thought-dropping, and swallows the cookie, golden eyes gleaming wickedly, and he looks like he's about to say something that will either make Sam blush horribly or make him want to dunk Gabriel in Holy Oil, but he's saved by the woman returning, carrying a baby in her arms and cooing to it.

And then _it_ is happening again. As soon as the baby notices Gabriel, it stops fussing, and then it smiles toothlessly at him, emitting a friendly gurgle.

"Aww, he likes you," the mother says, bouncing her son in her arms, and Gabriel gives her a sweet smile. "Uh, where were we?"

Sam jumps in smoothly and softly, with some pretend fumble through his notebook, and then nearly chokes on his own saliva. On the last page, below his interrupted notes, has inexplicably appeared a very simple and yet incredibly thought-out doodle of a gay sex act somehow involving cotton candy. With great effort, Sam manages to clear his throat and breathe again, very intensely focusing on the thought of murdering Gabriel, and hopes the archangel receives it loud and clear. He does, if the Bambi-worthy expression of pure innocence is anything to go by.

"Yeah, uh… you were saying something about the ghost of a woman, but…" Sam gathers his spooked thoughts. He flips the page to get the drawing out of his sight (and wishes it was that easy to get it out of his mind – he will _never_ look at cotton candy without mortification again!). "Are there any other… I dunno, local ghosts stories?"

"Yeah, we heard this one a lot already," Gabriel jumps in with his easy-going tone.

"Gee, I don't know," the woman reaches out to grab a soft plush ball and gives it to the baby who instantly starts chewing on it. "Haven't heard any, really. What, you think it's got something to do with the murders?" she leans in with amused disbelief.

Sam gives a convincing chuckle.

"Not really, but people get strange ideas. By the way – any deaths recently? I mean, apart from those three, obviously. You know, in recent years."

"Well – many, we've got an old people's home nearby-" a phone ring cuts into her sentence, and the baby starts whimpering again. "Oh, darn… no, no, no, don't cry… Crap, I gotta take this one, it's important, sorry… can you mind him for a bit?" she gets up from her chair and places the baby on the sofa between Sam and Gabriel, lovingly tucking the ball back into his hand. "I'll be right back, I'm sorry, it's work," she rushes off to pick up the phone, and soon her muffled voice comes in from the other room.

Sam eyes the baby uneasily, and gets a whimper in response, which gives him a bit of a panic. He's not really great with babies, he's the kid brother, Dean is better at handling that, because – as he points out whenever he's bored and there's no beer or _Star Trek_ reruns to distract him – he used to feed and burp Sam and change his diapers for the better part of his own childhood. He usually says this in front of people who know them. Cas heard this at least fifteen times already.

But before he manages to panic, _it_ happens again. The baby turns towards Gabriel, like it remembers his presence, and crawls towards him, still whining and threatening to cry. Gabriel grins almost wickedly, but his eyes spark with warmth, and he picks up the infant with ease, getting it comfortable.

"Hey, hey… shush up, you snotty bugger," he murmurs with a smirk as he bounces the baby a little, and it gurgles amicably again. "Yeah, that's what I thought. You're just full of it, aren't you? Got your mummy running to you as soon as you turn on the waterworks."

Sam watches in amazement as the child smiles widely again, and Gabriel snaps his fingers, causing a lollipop to appear in the baby's mouth. He's applauded heartily for his trick. Sam thinks about the wrongness of early sugar introduction to infants.

The baby mauls the lolly toothlessly, and Gabriel lets it do so for a moment, before snapping the treat away. Amazingly, there is no explosion of desperate shrieks. The child babbles something, and then settles in the archangel's hold, looking up at him, mouth open a little way, eyes wide and attentive but also somehow… dreamy? That's the closest of a word Sam can come up with to what he's seeing.

And Gabriel is smiling a little way. A bit snarky, a bit distanced, but that's only his lips. His eyes, on the other hand, are warm, shining like honey lit through by the summer sun, slow and deep and golden and eternal. There is peace in his gaze, a lot of affection, and so much more – the timelessness of his transcendent existence, the almost beatific visage of the archangel Gabriel, with the maelstrom of power lingering behind the peace.

And in that moment, Sam is convinced the baby is seeing it, too.

* * *

_It_ usually goes like this. There is a baby, and there is Gabriel, and the baby gets all calm, soothed and sometimes also zoned out, or other times cheery and friendly and open. There are pregnant women who, when interviewed, end up talking almost solely to Gabriel instead of Sam, and whom Gabriel always manages to make laugh or calm down.

Yeah, he's the Trickster and he can make anyone believe anything or behave any way, but it's not that, Sam thinks a few days later, on another case, when they wrap up interviewing an eight-months-in woman about a witch. It's something else than that.

Sam thinks _it_ might be exactly what it's supposed to be – Saint Gabriel the Archangel, the herald of two biblically important births and in some circles the patron of pregnant women and infants.

He hesitates to ask, though. Gabriel doesn't talk much about his days before he ran away from Heaven, and if there's one thing Sam can relate to, it's how complex a feeling it is to run away from one's family. How exhilarating, freeing, terrifying, thrilling, guilt-ridden and empowering it is.

So he doesn't ask. And he knows Gabriel must hear him think about it from time to time, and yet he never addresses that – which is all the more reason for Sam to keep a lid on his steadily growing curiosity about _it_.

With Gabriel's obnoxious mind-reading habit, Sam's grown to consider that his free thinking time in Gabriel's company, is when the archangel is asleep. Which does happen, actually. As in, almost every night. In Sam's bed. After some seriously fantastic sex (no cotton candy involved, luckily). Unlike Castiel, Gabriel actually does sleep – he claims he likes it (he allegedly once slept for twenty years just because), and angels apparently _can_ sleep, they just see no point in it. Although Dean apparently is successfully working on introducing Cas to the wonders of sleeping in.

Now Sam smiles, looking at Gabriel sprawled beside him on the motel bed, breathing evenly, bare chest rising and falling softly, the dim hint of the moon and streetlights bringing out his slim muscles very nicely. For someone so short, Gabriel is an incredible bed hog, amazingly managing to take up most of the mattress despite Sam's own size, and he also burns hot like a furnace. Still, it could be worse, Sam thinks fondly as he watches Gabriel. Dean's angel snores. Then again, so does Dean.

He reaches out to comb his fingers through Gabriel's dark golden hair. Outside, a car passes, its lights briefly brushing across the window, and for a moment the light plays a trick on Sam's eyes, breaking around Gabriel's head in what looks like a thin, sharp line of a halo. But the illusion lasts only a second and then is gone.

Still, it makes Sam go back to think about _it_. That thing about Gabriel being so good with infants. They all seem to love him, be appeased by his presence, and there is something about his way around them, he knows how to handle them, he does it with absolute ease.

Sam really wants to ask, but he guesses he never will. Gabriel doesn't react well to poking at his past as the Messenger of God when he's not the one bringing it up, and when he does happen to bring it up, it's usually in a fiercely sardonic joke.

"Pipe down, Moose, and go to sleep," Gabriel speaks perfectly clearly without moving or even opening his eyes, and Sam jumps embarrassingly in the bed. This does get Gabriel to move, and honey-gold eyes are peering at Sam in the mild darkness.

"Sorry," Sam murmurs, flushing, and shuffles a little, trying to make himself comfortable.

Gabriel heaves a theatrically dramatic sigh.

"Oh, for Dad's sake… if I tell you, will you go sleep?"

"Uh… OK?" Sam scoots closer, and Gabriel handles him like a pillow. He should be pissed, but like most things Gabriel gets up to, it just makes him laugh at some point.

Settled comfortably against him, Gabriel tangles their legs together under the covers, and Sam smiles, wrapping an arm around him, feeling the archangel's warmth buzz into his body.

"You're half right, kiddo," Gabriel starts, playing with Sam's hair (Sam _knows_ he's braiding it even if he's using just one hand). "It's partly because of what I used to be – you know, the angel of unplanned pregnancies and all? You gotta have the right personality for that."

Sam squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, trying to process the last sentence in the realm of even plausible reality, but can't. Gabriel snorts.

"Hey, trust me, I was the best choice. At the time," he adds honestly, and Sam chuckles, pulling him a bit closer. "So anyway – that's partially it, but I also genuinely like kids. And they genuinely love me, it's a gift. So that's it, no great Stanford brainwork required. Now go get your four hours, kiddo, because come tomorrow morning, I'm gonna work you like a loose screw in the doorknob," he waggles his eyebrows, and if he thinks it's gonna help Sam fall asleep easy, he's thoroughly wrong.

* * *

_It_ happens every now and then, but now Sam likes it more than is baffled by it. Gabriel's approach to infants is… unconventional, to say the best, but for the lack of any corny things people usually do around babies, he really does have a special way with them. It's more in his very presence than his particular actions.

Once or twice, _it_ happens with Cas and Dean in the room. Gabriel is smiling when a baby in its crib coos and babbles at him and Castiel, and Dean stands there, looking confused. Sam grins, watching the baby grab onto the wooden bars and stand up, reaching out to the angels.

Castiel tilts his head, smiling a little, and Gabriel catches his peaceful gaze. The two angels linger, probably sharing a moment of silent communication, and Gabriel shifts slightly, looking almost… well, Sam would say _sheepish_, if it weren't for the fact that Gabriel is downright physiologically incapable of being sheepish.

The moment soon is over between the angel brothers, and they follow through with their interviews, research, then the successful hunt (it's hard to be unsuccessful nowadays, with always an angel and often also an archangel to help out) and it's wrapped up. Gabriel pops off somewhere (but promises to turn up sometime soon – Sam was surprised when he first found he likes this, the way Gabriel comes and goes but the secure knowledge that he will always come again, makes him never gone _completely_, not for Sam at least, there is a thrum of constant presence, and it's warm and golden and makes him smile when he focuses in on it), and the three of them get into the Impala.

Cas is riding shotgun, because Dean says so, and Sam doesn't have anything against it. He smiles as he sees Dean run a loving hand through Castiel's hair, just like that, before he shifts into gear to drive out of the parking lot. Cas scoots closer on the bench, and Sam catches Dean's grin.

Sam's thoughts go back to Gabriel (as they often do, nowadays), and his smile grows wider. There are many creatures and even more stories about more creatures, which only children or even only toddlers can see. Maybe children see more than adults, in general, because they see what's important, they see the truth.

So maybe that's why they always smile and calm down when Gabriel or Castiel are present with them. Because the final truth about those two is, they ultimately want to be good.


End file.
